2008: #1 - "Live Your Life"

Its ridiculously catchy (and did we mention ridiculous?) interpolation of an annoying European dance hit should have pushed "Live Your Life" toward novelty territory, banishing it toward the bottom of our Top 20, if anything. There's nothing musically unique about it; the skittering machine gun drums sound cool and all, and work well in combo with both Rihanna's icy, robo-babe Auto-Tune vocals and T.I.'s super laid back - and out-of-place - sermonizing, but we've heard those drums before, and in much older and better sounding songs. Maybe the coolest part is those little Casio keyboard organs that come in during the 2nd half of the chorus. Sure, they're kind of out of the ordinary for a Southern rap tune, but then again, when was the last time T.I. could really be considered Southern rap - unless he gets bonus points for recruiting a Barbadian to help sell his records.

Though, when 2007 ended, we knew without a doubt that this was my number one song of the year. It hadn't been played out yet, and it just made me feel good. Then when we were making this list, nearly two years later, we'd pushed it down as far as #7 or so. We hadn't heard it in a while, and though we knew it was good, nothing was really jumping out about it, at least as far as our memory was concerned. Somehow, when we returned to it once more as we were officially finalizing the list, despite its silliness, despite the obvious Rihanna guest appearance, despite T.I.'s inability to really say anything deeper than the titular slogan (though his rhyme scheme and phonetic gymnastics in the 2nd verse are awesome), it still manages to be an extremely moving and uplifting song. We realize this is a very negative review for a dude's #1 song of the year, so we'll shut up now and, like we've done on a few other occasions, steer you to the video link above so you can hear it for yourself.